Accelerating the path to Healthcare 4.0

What are the critical questions at the heart of Healthcare 4.0? This was one of the burning topics on the agenda at the recent UK & Ireland Healthcare Innovation Summit 2025, organised by Bamberg Health. Healthcare leaders, innovators and policymakers gathered to discuss this and other key issues, plus exchange ideas, share strategies, and explore the technologies shaping the future of healthcare. And, yes, the Mindera Public Sector team was there in force, delighted to be a key sponsor!

Balancing act

The successful integration of advanced digital technologies, like AI, IoT, and Big Data, into healthcare to create smarter, more connected, and patient-centric services is the cornerstone of Healthcare 4.0. And in the summit’s opening keynote, the Deputy Director of NHS England, Dr Arrash Yassaee, explained that getting it right required delicately balancing three key factors:

• Rigor versus Pace: How to maintain quality while moving at the required speed of innovation?
• Local versus National: How to balance local decision-making with the power of national scale?
• Competitive Markets versus Simpler Procurement: How to foster a vibrant market while making it easier for the best solutions to be adopted?

Dr Yassaee revealed three solutions that the national MedTech programmes in NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care aim to address in their 10-year plan:

• Improving market access and core infrastructure.
• Optimising the commercial and commissioning environment.
• Enhancing adoption support for founders, products, and manufacturers.

Diversifying skills

This was a great start and set the tone for a day of fascinating insight and debate. Highlights include NHS Innovation Accelerator Co-Director Mindy Simon’s observation, during the ‘Innovation Starts at Home’ session on the need to diversify workforce skills and talent, that new tech is parachuted in without any wraparound training or support. She was also keen to stress that procuring tech solutions once for the whole NHS won’t work, because not every situation is the same.

One of several comments from an engaged audience was particularly pertinent: How do we get innovations to places where they can solve problems? Chair of the debate Rachel Pyrah, Chief Digital Information Officer at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, suggested this is something we can use the NHS Innovation Service for more effectively.

“We’re approaching 1,500 registered innovations,” she said. “We have a network the length and breadth of the UK with on-the-ground understanding of problems and expertise in implementation. We’re seeing the beginnings of a new culture of inter-organisational referrals with the NHS IS, which is really exciting, but what more can we do?” Certainly, a very good question everyone involved in healthcare technology needs to seriously consider.

The future is interoperable

Inspired by Director of Enterprise and Innovation at Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber Neville Young’s emphasis on interoperability in the ‘Smart Hospitals’ session, Rachel concluded: “The future is interoperable, user-centred innovations, assessed to a reasonable standard centrally, curated and adapted by individual providers, and implemented with skill and support from experts. All of that should get things to patients faster! There, I’ve cracked it!”

Well done, Rachel! We think you have!

Other interesting perspectives from across the event include public health clinician Joe Home’s comment on innovation's equity-efficiency tension. He warned that digital health products can either reduce the health gap or exclude underserved groups, depending on whether they are implemented equitably and in collaboration with local communities.

Optimising AI’s patient impact

Returning to the Healthcare 4.0 discussion, it was great to hear that AI is no longer at the periphery of healthcare, but already changing how people work. This makes it vital to prevent silo deployments that simply divert bottlenecks downstream, widen equity of access, and embed robust governance as organisations keep pace with innovation.

Optimising the benefits of AI for patients means putting the right foundations in place. This includes developing an AI-skilled workforce, improving safety and assurance through stronger regulators, and maximising investment and private sector partnerships to develop pilots and scale the most innovate AI tools.

Plenty to think about!

Get in touch with the Mindera Public Sector Team if you like to discuss any of the above topics, or for advice on digitising your healthcare services. Link